Polarized light emission from individual incandescent carbon nanotubes

Abstract

We fabricate nanoscale lamps which have a filament consisting of a single multiwalled carbon nanotube. After determining the nanotube geometry with a transmission electron microscope, we use Joule heating to bring the filament to incandescence, with peak temperatures in excess of 2000 K. We image the thermal light in both polarizations simultaneously as a function of wavelength and input electrical power. The observed degree of polarization is typically of the order of 75%, a magnitude predicted by a Mie model of the filament that assigns graphene's optical conductance $\pi e^2/2h$ to each nanotube wall.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Unusual Microwave Response of Dirac Quasiparticles in Graphene
• Electrically driven thermal light emission from individual single-walled carbon nanotubes
• Absorption spectroscopy of individual single-walled carbon nanotubes
• Exciton diffusion in air-suspended single-walled carbon nanotubes